Minister of Financial Services, Trade and Industry and Immigration and Yamacraw MP Elsworth Johnson.
NASSAU, BAHAMAS Minister of Immigration Elsworth Johnson said the government has “taken a stand” on access to the fishing sector and while there are those who have criticized amendments to fisheries and immigration regulations as discriminatory, the Constitution allows the government to “legally discriminate”.
The Fisheries Act, 2020, which was passed in the Senate this week, prevents the foreign spouses of Bahamians from engaging in commercial fishing.
“This is not a matter of recent vintage,” Johnson told the media.
“The Constitution allows it. Persons can’t just come and decide they want to be an MP and you’re not a citizen or a senator or a police officer or any varied number of areas.
PRESENTATION TO RIGHTS BAHAMAS
Joseph Darville
Vice-President
How long the abuse of women and children has existed on the planet; hundred years, five, thousand…always been there. In society knowing it was here, suddenly it becomes more transparent; those with money cannot hide it any longer. The corruption attached to businesses, governments and the rich hardly ever made it to the newspapers. But a transparency is beginning to happen. We’re now seeing things that one never imagined could happen. Compassion is finding a home in the hearts of many.
It was said that could not happen; old axiom, if you have enough money, power, or influence, you can keep everything hidden or pay for it to go away. That has stopped in recent times. How many famous people are going to jail for what they have done in the past? The numbers are increasing daily. What has been seen in long past times is not acceptable now.
rrolle@tribunemedia.net
IN response to claims that seven asylum seekers who sought to take refuge in The Bahamas after fleeing Cameroon because of persecution fears were illegally detained, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that the government is satisfied that the rights of detainees have not been violated.
The ministry also said the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered the repatriation of detainees to their home countries as well as the processing of asylum seekers.
Human Rights Bahamas, in a statement to The Tribune last week, claimed the asylum seekers were not charged with nor convicted of a crime in this country and there was no legal justification for holding them indefinitely. The watchdog group said all of the asylum seekers were interviewed by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and are in the process of having their political refugee status officially confirmed.